Statistics – Page 186 – William M. Briggs

Godzilla’s Changing Height: A Statistical Analysis

I grew up watching Channel 50's Creature Feature and Channel 7's 4 pm Monster Week movies, many of which featured Ultraman, Rodan, Gamera, Gargantua, and, of course, Godzilla. Too, I…

Philosophy Statistics

Frequentists Are Closet Bayesians: Confidence Interval Edition

Actually, all frequentists and Bayesians are logical probabilists, but if I put that in the title, few would believe it. A man might call himself an Anti-Gravitational Theorist, a science…

Statistics

William M. Briggs Sez: Keep That Impressive Middle Initial

You can take it from William M. Briggs, and also from the Today show: sporting a middle initial is a mark of sophistication, intelligence, and rugged manliness---or womanliness, as the…

Statistics

Researchers: Calling Girls Fat Makes Them Fat

Whatever you do, don't call somebody a "researcher". It could condemn them to a nasty, brutish, and short-tempered life. The kind where most of their time is spent scrambling for…

Statistics

Time Series And Causality: Global Warming Example

Temperature causes Here is an atmospheric monthly average temperature series: T = (61, 69, 69, 70, 72, 65, 63) (all F). What caused the temperature to take the value T1…

Statistics

Time Series Aren’t Easy: Tornado Deaths Example

Time series are the most abused statistics in the physical sciences. (It's an endless, raucous, peer-reviewed contest for the worst in the "soft sciences.") The Mann problem (is that a…

Philosophy Statistics

Physical Probability Doesn’t Exist

There have been many attempts to tie probability to physical chance. Here, briefly and for discussion, is why I think all of them fail. Ontology does not recapitulate epistemology Let…

Culture Statistics

A New Possible Solution Of Fermi’s Paradox

What is the probability the following proposition is true? ``There are rational beings other than humans in the universe." Well, given the evidence of angels, who are rational non-human beings,…

Steve on The If I Were God Fallacy & EvolutionJuly 30, 2025
@Briggs, "Many say various oaths and whatnot, but looking at their behavior it’s clear most have no idea what these…
Maypo on The If I Were God Fallacy & EvolutionJuly 29, 2025
Wow, (re)reading a TOFian essay makes it so blasted plain how much I miss the man. May he rest in…
C-Marie on The If I Were God Fallacy & EvolutionJuly 29, 2025
God is, and always has been, and always will be. It is your choice to exercise your free will, to…
hudbwu on The If I Were God Fallacy & EvolutionJuly 29, 2025
> If I were God, and loved rational creatures, I would make myriad rational species; He should come back in…
NLR on The If I Were God Fallacy & EvolutionJuly 29, 2025
What gets me about these kind of arguments is that they presuppose too much. People will have extensive debates about…